Not content, it seems, with the likely eventuality of practicing law, recent University of Guyana Law graduate, Joshua Edwards, would appear to have set his mind on ‘doubling up.’ Wherever the practice of law may take him he also has his mind set on business. Accordingly, these are both challenging and exciting times for Joshua. With Guyana’s oil and gas bonanza having made entrepreneurship a clear option he is weighing his options whilst not allowing grass to grow under his feet.
For young, ambitious souls like Joshua, however, the road to upward mobility is paved with challenges. He has already had his ‘brushes’ with business. Purpose Employment Agency, he says, is an Employment Agency which he created in order to challenge himself to try to find as many worthwhile jobs for as many deserving young people as he could. The idea, he said, had derived from experiences he had faced with the sustainability of his own, earlier established small business, Wendy’s Pizzas. Good help, he discovered then, is usually hard to find. It was his own recruitment challenges that pushed him to apply his sparse knowledge of Human Resource Management to seeking to turn his predicament around.
Following that experience, finding jobs for job-seekers has now become his principal priority. Nor is he ever daunted by the magnitude of the challenge. In this instance, he told the Stabroek Business, youth and inexperience are being compensated for by studious research in consultation with ‘older heads.’ His current preoccupation with finding jobs for people, he says, has taught him a good deal more. Successfully matching prospective employees with jobs, he says, is a pursuit from which he derives particular satisfaction. There are, he says, particular skills and intuitions that are required for success at this pursuit.
Not all of the challenges undertaken by his fledgling employment agency have been successful. “Some businessmen and women were not too fond of our venture,” he told the Stabroek Business. He believes, however, that the success that derives from matching employee with employer is, in itself, a considerable accomplishment. His focus goes beyond the exercise of simply finding a job. He also has a keen interest in helping prospective employees prepare for jobs. Joshua’s interest in doing what he does has taken him in the direction of fashioning a ‘curriculum’ for job-seekers. His tuition regime includes ‘classes’ in Inter-Personal Communication, Team Work, Stress Management, and Adaptability.
His philosophy here is that it makes little sense sending prospective employees like lambs to the slaughter of their responsibilities. Nor does he ever forget that he, himself, is perched on a different learning curve and that he needs to continue to refine his own capabilities if his own entrepreneurial ambitions are to be realized. Here, a knowledge of the law can be a considerable asset, he says. Patience and focus are, in his circumstances, priceless virtues, he says.
